Cutting performance of a chemical oxygen-iodine laser

Chemical Oxygen-Iodine Laser (COIL) is a member of the class of high power lasers for industrial applications, including the materials processing tasks of high speed cutting and drilling. COIL technology has received considerable interest over the last several years due to its short, fiber- deliverable wavelength (1.315 microns), scalability to very high powers (tens of kilowatts, cw), and demonstrated nearly diffraction-limited optical quality. Its material interaction characteristics are similar to the Nd:YAG laser since the wavelengths of these lasers are comparable. This paper documents the cutting performance of a high power, good optical quality COIL. In this experiment different types of materials were cut with the COIL, and the cut depth and width are presented here as a function of various process parameters.